Obamanomics: Over 93 Million Out of Work, 56 Million Women Unemployed

The BLS reports that 93,770,000 people (16 and older) were neither employed last month nor had made specific efforts to find work in the prior four weeks.

The number of people outside the workforce in July increased 144,000 over June’s record when 93,626,000 were not in the workforce.

July’s labor force participation rate however remained the the same as June at 62.6 percent. Before last month the labor force participation rate had not been that low since October 1977, when the participation rate was 62.4 percent.

The BLS reports that the civilian labor force did experience a slight uptick from 157,037,000 in June to 157,106,000 in July after the month of June saw it drop by 432,000.

While the labor participation rate remains at the lowest its been since the late 1970s, the BLS highlighted that the unemployment rate remained at 5.3 percent and nonfarm payroll jobs increased by 215,000.

According to the BLS, 56,209,000 women aged 16 and older were not participating in the workforce in July, besting April’s record of 56,167,000 women who were neither employed nor had made a specific effort to find work in the four weeks prior.

July’s figures represented an uptick of 124,000 over June’s level of 56,085,000 women who were out of the workforce.

The civilian labor force also shrank for women last month from 73,547,000 in June to 73,528,000 in July. The labor force participation rate for women, meanwhile, remained the same at 56.7 percent.

Of those women considered to be in the workforce, 69,638,000 had a job and 3,891,000 were unemployed. The unemployment rate for women was 5.3 percent in July, up slightly from June’s 5.2 percent.

We don’t have 93 million ‘unemployed’. To get to that figure, you have to include about 40 million retired people. Then you have stay at home parents, full time students. It’s a very bogus figure to be used in the way it’s used here.